Our society can be described as having a very short memory for politics. Political actors believe or at least want to make the populace believe that they are doing something novel every time they engage in a high-profile act. For instance, Imran Khan believes that he is leading a unique and novel political movement in the country's history, which seeks to hold the powerful accountable for the first time. Khan also believes that he is the first to seriously question the dominance of the military establishment in recent history.
Imran Khan’s campaign to make Nawaz Sharif accountable for alleged financial corruption in 2017 followed an age-old pattern in Pakistani politics where the military, intelligence services and establishment colluded with rising and popular leaders to put anti-military political leaders into the docks after their ousters from power. If anybody has any doubts about Imran Khan being the first to question the military's dominance, they should try to study how Benazir Bhutto reacted to her ouster in 1990 and 1996, or how Nawaz Sharif reacted to his disqualification by the Supreme Court in 2017.
The only thing unique about Imran Khan is his use of violence against the military as part of his anti-military campaign. Yet we see people genuinely believing that Imran Khan is engaging in some unique political crusade, primarily because our society collectively suffers from political amnesia. Similarly, political commentators are trying to present Imran Khan’s possible disqualification from holding public office as something novel and unique. While Imran Khan is the darling of Pakistan’s middle classes, the most endeared social group for the Pakistani state, his possible disqualification will not be a unique phenomenon - it will be an act that has been repeated umpteen times in our history.
Prime Ministers and popular leaders like Hussein Shaheed Suharwardi, Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are only a few victims of this tactic deployed by the state machinery. The character of the Pakistani state is such that the pervasive propaganda painting these gentlemen as criminals at the time of the verdicts was widely accepted as true. All these gentlemen were rescued by history. Prime Minister Hussein Shaheed Suharwardi is viewed as a real gentleman in our history. Bhutto and Sharif have a thumping presence in our politics.
So, whatever has happened and will happen to Imran Khan, and what Khan is doing or has already done to our political culture and system is nothing new or unique. If we as a society had not been suffering from a short memory, we would have gotten bored by the oddly circular movement of our political history. Imran Khan, like many others, has rubbed our military establishment the wrong way, and now they will punish him by forcing him out of politics. Public opinion is largely what they make it out to be, since the public’s opinion is their bed fellow.
Here I will make a case against Imran Khan’s possible disqualification on purely political grounds. I will for a moment skip the evidence and arguments in support of the contention that Imran Khan was the mastermind behind the mayhem on May 9. My argument is that even if Imran Khan is guilty, this political system will not be able to endure the shock of his disqualification. Just like guilty verdicts against Bhutto and Sharif took away part of the legitimacy of the post-verdict political system, Imran Khan’s guilty verdict and consequent disqualification will dent the legitimacy structures of the system that the powers that be will put in place in the wake of the verdict. Anyone making the decision about removing Imran Khan from the political scene will have to give a thought to the legitimacy of the structures in place post-verdict.
The Pakistani military has a long history of crashing the political aspirations of different segments of society at different times in our history. The legal justifications of evidence against Imran Khan probably will help little in convincing the popular support base that has congealed around his person that the system is punishing a criminal and not blocking their political aspirations that they have come to attach with the person of Imran Khan. History, of course, will remember Imran Khan as a populist leader whose popularity rose with the deteriorating economic conditions of the Pakistani middle classes—that led to deep seat discontent in the urban areas. However, our deeply religious culture has a long tradition of romanticizing political martyrs. Our urban middle classes are a malleable lot, and they change political loyalties in normal non-coercive circumstances very easily. Zia, Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf were all popular among these classes during the past forty years, and all of them faded in the dustbin of history under normal non-coercive circumstances. But Bhutto still rules the mind of segments of Pakistani society, as he was physically removed from the scene in deeply coercive circumstances.
Imran Khan’s anti-elite rhetoric endeared him to the deeply discontented middle classes and down trodden alike. There seems to be a plan to chip away Imran Khan’s vote bank by assembling electables, local politicians who are influential enough to win elections in their constituency without the support of popular political parties, associated with his party under the banner of another political party. This plan can work under a strictly controlled electoral process. This was the plan that Musharraf employed against Nawaz Sharif after the October 1999 coup that brought him to power. He assembled electables under the leadership of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat and engineered a controlled electoral process that bestowed a majority on the PML-Q in the 2002 parliamentary elections. However, the controlled electoral process left a deep-seated legitimacy question for the system General Musharraf put in place to prevent Nawaz Sharif from coming back to power in the wake of the 1999 coup. And the Musharraf system failed to survive the electoral process when Musharraf was not in the position to dominate that process. Come the 2008 parliamentary elections, PML-Q miserably lost.
If Imran Khan has the endurance to serve a jail sentence awarded to him by a military court, he might emerge as a folk hero. This is not an exaggeration. Look at where our society is headed. The economy is in shambles and there are zero chances that there will be a turn around. Middle class discontent will grow even worse. The political fortunes of PML-N, another claimant of middle-class loyalties, are in steep decline. Social and economic discontent and political instability will provide fuel to the myth that is likely to congeal around the persona of Imran Khan.
The establishment will end up creating a larger than life martyr figure among our midst. Worst of all, the removal of Imran Khan from the political scene will create a permanent legitimacy question for the system that the powers will establish in his wake. Remember that we as a society are still living in the aftermath of Nawaz Sharif’s dubious removal from the political scene. The system Imran Khan presided over after the 2018 parliamentary elections completely lacked legitimacy, and the system that will take birth after Imran Khan’s removal from the political scene will be similarly void of political legitimacy as the one he presided over.
Political engineering didn’t pay then. It will not pay now.
Imran Khan’s campaign to make Nawaz Sharif accountable for alleged financial corruption in 2017 followed an age-old pattern in Pakistani politics where the military, intelligence services and establishment colluded with rising and popular leaders to put anti-military political leaders into the docks after their ousters from power. If anybody has any doubts about Imran Khan being the first to question the military's dominance, they should try to study how Benazir Bhutto reacted to her ouster in 1990 and 1996, or how Nawaz Sharif reacted to his disqualification by the Supreme Court in 2017.
The only thing unique about Imran Khan is his use of violence against the military as part of his anti-military campaign. Yet we see people genuinely believing that Imran Khan is engaging in some unique political crusade, primarily because our society collectively suffers from political amnesia. Similarly, political commentators are trying to present Imran Khan’s possible disqualification from holding public office as something novel and unique. While Imran Khan is the darling of Pakistan’s middle classes, the most endeared social group for the Pakistani state, his possible disqualification will not be a unique phenomenon - it will be an act that has been repeated umpteen times in our history.
Imran Khan, like many others, has rubbed our military establishment the wrong way, and now they will punish him by forcing him out of politics.
Prime Ministers and popular leaders like Hussein Shaheed Suharwardi, Zulifiqar Ali Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif are only a few victims of this tactic deployed by the state machinery. The character of the Pakistani state is such that the pervasive propaganda painting these gentlemen as criminals at the time of the verdicts was widely accepted as true. All these gentlemen were rescued by history. Prime Minister Hussein Shaheed Suharwardi is viewed as a real gentleman in our history. Bhutto and Sharif have a thumping presence in our politics.
So, whatever has happened and will happen to Imran Khan, and what Khan is doing or has already done to our political culture and system is nothing new or unique. If we as a society had not been suffering from a short memory, we would have gotten bored by the oddly circular movement of our political history. Imran Khan, like many others, has rubbed our military establishment the wrong way, and now they will punish him by forcing him out of politics. Public opinion is largely what they make it out to be, since the public’s opinion is their bed fellow.
Here I will make a case against Imran Khan’s possible disqualification on purely political grounds. I will for a moment skip the evidence and arguments in support of the contention that Imran Khan was the mastermind behind the mayhem on May 9. My argument is that even if Imran Khan is guilty, this political system will not be able to endure the shock of his disqualification. Just like guilty verdicts against Bhutto and Sharif took away part of the legitimacy of the post-verdict political system, Imran Khan’s guilty verdict and consequent disqualification will dent the legitimacy structures of the system that the powers that be will put in place in the wake of the verdict. Anyone making the decision about removing Imran Khan from the political scene will have to give a thought to the legitimacy of the structures in place post-verdict.
The Pakistani military has a long history of crashing the political aspirations of different segments of society at different times in our history. The legal justifications of evidence against Imran Khan probably will help little in convincing the popular support base that has congealed around his person that the system is punishing a criminal and not blocking their political aspirations that they have come to attach with the person of Imran Khan. History, of course, will remember Imran Khan as a populist leader whose popularity rose with the deteriorating economic conditions of the Pakistani middle classes—that led to deep seat discontent in the urban areas. However, our deeply religious culture has a long tradition of romanticizing political martyrs. Our urban middle classes are a malleable lot, and they change political loyalties in normal non-coercive circumstances very easily. Zia, Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf were all popular among these classes during the past forty years, and all of them faded in the dustbin of history under normal non-coercive circumstances. But Bhutto still rules the mind of segments of Pakistani society, as he was physically removed from the scene in deeply coercive circumstances.
If Imran Khan has the endurance to serve a jail sentence awarded to him by a military court, he might emerge as a folk hero. This is not an exaggeration.
Imran Khan’s anti-elite rhetoric endeared him to the deeply discontented middle classes and down trodden alike. There seems to be a plan to chip away Imran Khan’s vote bank by assembling electables, local politicians who are influential enough to win elections in their constituency without the support of popular political parties, associated with his party under the banner of another political party. This plan can work under a strictly controlled electoral process. This was the plan that Musharraf employed against Nawaz Sharif after the October 1999 coup that brought him to power. He assembled electables under the leadership of the Chaudhrys of Gujrat and engineered a controlled electoral process that bestowed a majority on the PML-Q in the 2002 parliamentary elections. However, the controlled electoral process left a deep-seated legitimacy question for the system General Musharraf put in place to prevent Nawaz Sharif from coming back to power in the wake of the 1999 coup. And the Musharraf system failed to survive the electoral process when Musharraf was not in the position to dominate that process. Come the 2008 parliamentary elections, PML-Q miserably lost.
If Imran Khan has the endurance to serve a jail sentence awarded to him by a military court, he might emerge as a folk hero. This is not an exaggeration. Look at where our society is headed. The economy is in shambles and there are zero chances that there will be a turn around. Middle class discontent will grow even worse. The political fortunes of PML-N, another claimant of middle-class loyalties, are in steep decline. Social and economic discontent and political instability will provide fuel to the myth that is likely to congeal around the persona of Imran Khan.
The establishment will end up creating a larger than life martyr figure among our midst. Worst of all, the removal of Imran Khan from the political scene will create a permanent legitimacy question for the system that the powers will establish in his wake. Remember that we as a society are still living in the aftermath of Nawaz Sharif’s dubious removal from the political scene. The system Imran Khan presided over after the 2018 parliamentary elections completely lacked legitimacy, and the system that will take birth after Imran Khan’s removal from the political scene will be similarly void of political legitimacy as the one he presided over.
Political engineering didn’t pay then. It will not pay now.